Wednesday, August 31, 2016

In teaching a course to my students this summer about ISIS and the Crusades, we had occasion to illustrate my point about the uses and abuses of history, including romanticized nostalgia for a past that never was, by discussing the notion of a caliph and a caliphate that ISIS makes so much of today. In doing so ISIS conveniently ignores the fact that the last caliphate was unceremoniously abolished in 1924 with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (recently discussed here) and an attempt at resurrecting it two years later met with a collective shrug of indifference from the Islamic world. The last caliph himself was wanted by nobody in the Islamic world, and so had to be ingloriously shipped off to exile in Paris via a British gunboat.

The history of the caliphate, then, and any coherent understanding of that office, let alone resurrection of it, are all therefore far from straightforward, and the idea that it is a central institution demanded if not beloved by all Muslims is obviously false. The complexities of all this are discussed in a forthcoming book by Hugh Kennedy, Caliphate: The History of an Idea (Basic Books, October 2016), 336pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

In Caliphate, Islamic historian Hugh Kennedy dissects the idea of the caliphate and its history, and explores how it became used and abused today. Contrary to popular belief, there is no one enduring definition of a caliph; rather, the idea of the caliph has been the subject of constant debate and transformation over time. Kennedy offers a grand history of the caliphate since the beginning of Islam to its modern incarnations. Originating in the tumultuous years following the death of the Mohammad in 632, the caliphate, a politico-religious system, flourished in the great days of the Umayyads of Damascus and the Abbasids of Baghdad. From the seventh-century Orthodox caliphs to the nineteenth-century Ottomans, Kennedy explores the tolerant rule of Umar, recounts the traumatic murder of the caliph Uthman, dubbed a tyrant by many, and revels in the flourishing arts of the golden eras of Abbasid Baghdad and Moorish Andalucía. Kennedy also examines the modern fate of the caliphate, unraveling the British political schemes to spur dissent against the Ottomans and the ominous efforts of Islamists, including ISIS, to reinvent the history of the caliphate for their own malevolent political ends.

In exploring and explaining the great variety of caliphs who have ruled throughout the ages, Kennedy challenges the very narrow views of the caliphate propagated by extremist groups today. An authoritative new account of the dynasties of Arab leaders throughout the Islamic Golden Age, Caliphate traces the history—and misappropriations—of one of the world’s most potent political ideas.

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

A year ago last week this volume finally appeared in print, but it is only this week that I have been able to work it into one of my courses with the beginning of this academic year. So for those who missed it a year ago when I drew attention to it, I reprint my post from then about a very substantial and impressive collection, which is ideally suited for classroom usage: Matthew Levering and Hans Boersma, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology (Oxford, 2015), 736pp.

Though I am of course somewhat biased, I do think the publisher is correct in enumerating some of the virtues of this collection thus, saying the handbook

Provides a multi-faceted introduction to sacramental theology

Introduces readers to the historical roots and development of Christian sacramental worship

Was written by an international team of authors who are leading practitioners of the discipline

We are further told about this book:

As
a multi-faceted introduction to sacramental theology, the purposes of
this Handbook are threefold: historical, ecumenical, and missional. The
forty-four chapters are organized into the following parts five parts:
Sacramental Roots in Scripture, Patristic Sacramental Theology, Medieval
Sacramental Theology, From the Reformation through Today, and
Philosophical and Theological Issues in Sacramental Doctrine.

Contributors
to this Handbook explain the diverse ways that believers have construed
the
sacraments, both in inspired Scripture and in the history of the
Church's practice. In Scripture and the early Church, Orthodox,
Protestants, and Catholics all find evidence that the first Christian
communities celebrated and taught about the sacraments in a manner that
Orthodox, Protestants, and Catholics today affirm as the foundation of
their own faith and practice. Thus, for those who want to understand
what has been taught about the sacraments in Scripture and across the
generations by the major thinkers of the various Christian traditions,
this Handbook provides an introduction. As the divisions in Christian
sacramental understanding and practice are certainly evident in this
Handbook, it is not thereby without ecumenical and missional value.
This book evidences that the story of the Christian sacraments is,
despite divisions in interpretation and practice, one of tremendous
hope.

And as you peruse this Table of Contents you will note many prominent scholars of Eastern Christianity (noted in italics)

Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering: Introduction: The Handbook's Three Purposes

Sacramental Roots in Scripture
1: Walter Moberly: Sacramentality And The Old Testament
2: Dennis T. Olson: Sacramentality in the Torah
3: Craig A. Evans and Jeremiah J. Johnston: Intertestamental Background of the Christian Sacraments
4: Nicholas Perrin: Sacraments and Sacramentality in the New Testament
5: Edith M. Humphrey: Sacrifice and Sacrament: Sacramental Implications of the Death of Christ
6: Richard Bauckham: Sacraments and the Gospel of John
7: David Lincicum: Sacraments in the Pauline Epistles
8: Luke Timothy Johnson: Sacramentality and Sacraments in Hebrews

Patristic Sacramental Theology
9: Everett Ferguson: Sacraments in the Pre-Nicene Period
10: Khaled Anatolios: Sacraments in the Fourth Century
11: Lewis Ayres and Thomas Humphries: Augustine and the West to AD 650
12: Andrew Louth: Late Patristic Developments in Sacramental Theology in the East (Fifth-Ninth Century)

Monday, August 29, 2016

When it first appeared in 2008, I read with great interest Susan Wessel's fascinating and important study, Leo the Great and the Spiritual Rebuilding of a Universal Rome.Among other things, it sheds important light on Leo's role in the Council of Chalcedon, including its famous controverted 28th canon about patriarchal jurisdictions and so-called Roman pre-eminence. Wessel's considerable achievement was to show that Leo--pace later Eastern fears--was not engaged in a campaign of self-aggrandizement at the expense of the East. In fact, both Rome and Constantinople misunderstood the motives and actions of each other when, in fact, it seems they were both concerned about maintaining ecclesial affairs in their own spheres "decently and in good order," without trying to one-up each other.

The publisher, who has made this book available both in print and in a Kindle format, tells us the following about the book:

This book examines how the early Christian elite articulated and cultivated the affective dimensions of compassion in a Roman world that promoted emotional tranquillity as the path to human flourishing. Drawing upon a wide range of early Christians from both east and west, Wessel situates each author in the broader cultural and intellectual context. The reader is introduced to the diverse conditions in which Christians felt and were urged to feel compassion in exemplary ways, and in which warnings were sounded against the possibilities for distortion and exploitation. Wessel argues that the early Christians developed literary methods and rhetorical techniques to bring about appropriate emotional responses to human suffering. Their success in this regard marks the beginning of affective compassion as a Christian virtue. Comparison with early modern and contemporary philosophers and ethicists further demonstrates the intrinsic worth of the early Christian understanding of compassion.

Friday, August 26, 2016

The would-be psychoanalyst in me is always curious as to whether there are any patterns or discernible reasons for why the mind circles back at unexpected moments to books one read decades ago and had by now all but forgotten. In my case, I have been giving a great deal of thought to Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom, first published in 1941. Some twenty or more years ago now, I found an original copy in a wonderfully quiet and out-of-the way used bookstore in Ottawa that has, alas, long since closed.

This book of Fromm's seems perhaps freshly suited to understanding much of what is going on in our time, including in presidential politics here in Her Britannic Majesty's erstwhile American colonies.

As I have been thinking on that book again, and wondering about reading more of Fromm's life, I see, perusing the back-lists of Columbia University Press, that just such an intellectual biography was recently published: The Lives of Erich Fromm: Love's Prophet(CUP, 2014), 410pp.

About this book, which I'm looking forward to reading, the publisher tells us:

Erich Fromm was a political activist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher, and one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. Known for his theories of personality and political insight, Fromm dissected the sadomasochistic appeal of brutal dictators while also eloquently championing love—which, he insisted, was nothing if it did not involve joyful contact with others and humanity at large. Admired all over the world, Fromm continues to inspire with his message of universal brotherhood and quest for lasting peace.

The first systematic study of Fromm's influences and achievements, this biography revisits the thinker's most important works, especially Escape from Freedom and The Art of Loving, which conveyed important and complex ideas to millions of readers. The volume recounts Fromm's political activism as a founder and major funder of Amnesty International, the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and other peace groups. Consulting rare archival materials across the globe, Lawrence J. Friedman reveals Fromm's support for anti-Stalinist democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe and his efforts to revitalize American democracy. For the first time, readers learn about Fromm's direct contact with high officials in the American government on matters of war and peace while accessing a deeper understanding of his conceptual differences with Freud, his rapport with Neo-Freudians like Karen Horney and Harry Stack Sullivan, and his association with innovative artists, public intellectuals, and world leaders. Friedman elucidates Fromm's key intellectual contributions, especially his innovative concept of "social character," in which social institutions and practices shape the inner psyche, and he clarifies Fromm's conception of love as an acquired skill. Taking full stock of the thinker's historical and global accomplishments, Friedman portrays a man of immense authenticity and spirituality who made life in the twentieth century more humane than it might have been.

Thursday, August 25, 2016

I gave a lecture last year on the centenary of the Armenian genocide, and took the occasion to note two coterminous but lesser known genocides at the time: that of Greek and Assyrian Christians in Anatolia. The Armenian genocide, as I have noted on here frequently, has occasioned a great deal of scholarly attention in the last two decades, but knowledge of the other two has largely been confined to a handful of scholarly articles in relatively recondite journals--until now.

The Armenian genocide of 1915 has been well documented. Much less known is the Turkish genocide of the Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac peoples, which occurred simultaneously in their ancient homelands in and around ancient Mesopotamia - now Turkey, Iran and Iraq. The advent of the First World War gave the Young Turks and the Ottoman government the opportunity to exterminate the Assyrians in a series of massacres and atrocities inflicted on a people whose culture dates back millennia and whose language, Aramaic, was spoken by Jesus. Systematic killings, looting, rape, kidnapping and deportations destroyed countless communities and created a vast refugee diaspora. As many as 300,000 Assyro-Chaldean- Syriac people were murdered and a larger number forced into exile. The "Year of the Sword" (Seyfo) in 1915 was preceded over millennia by other attacks on the Assyrians and has been mirrored by recent events, not least the abuses committed by Islamic State.

Joseph Yacoub, whose family was murdered and dispersed, has gathered together a compelling range of eye-witness accounts and reports which cast light on this 'hidden genocide.' Passionate and yet authoritative in its research, his book reveals a little-known human and cultural tragedy. A century after the Assyrian genocide, the fate of this Christian minority hangs in the balance.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

The Orthodox scholar Scott Kenworthy alerted me to the publication of this hefty and impressive collection containing chapters on Orthodoxy by James Skedros and John McGuckin as well as Scott himself--in addition to articles on Middle Eastern Christianity and much else besides of interest to the Christian East: Lamin Sanneh and Michael McClymond, eds., The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Christianity(2016), 784pp.

About this collection the publisher provides the briefest of blurbs:

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Christianity presents a collection of essays that explore a range of topics relating to the rise, spread, and influence of Christianity throughout the world.

Monday, August 22, 2016

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Christian East, or patristic and exegetical history, has invariably and frequently encountered the famed, if not hackneyed, Antioch-Alexandria "divide" when it comes to hermeneutics and exegesis as well as Christology. Any nostrum that is repeated as often as this one deserves to come in for fresh re-examination, and it appears we have it in a recent study by Richard Perhai, Antiochene Theoria in the Writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus (Fortress, 2015).

About this book the publisher tells us:

Biblical scholars have often contrasted the
exegesis of the early church fathers from the eastern region and
“school” of Syrian Antioch against that of the school of Alexandria. The
Antiochenes have often been described as strictly historical-literal
exegetes in contrast to the allegorical exegesis of the Alexandrians.
Patristic scholars now challenge those stereotypes, some even arguing
that few differences existed between the two groups.

This work
agrees that both schools were concerned with a literal and spiritual
reading. But, it also tries to show, through analysis of Theodore and
Theodoret’s exegesis and use of the term theoria, that how they
integrated the literal-theological readings often remained quite
distinct from the Alexandrians. For the Antiochenes, the term theoria
did not mean allegory, but instead stood for a range of
perceptions—prophetic, christological, and contemporary. It is in these
insights that we find the deep wisdom to help modern readers interpret
Scripture theologically.

Friday, August 19, 2016

Forthcoming in October is a paperback version of a book previously published in hardback. Edited by Elazar Barkan and Karen Barkey, Choreographies of Shared Sacred Sites: Religion, Politics, and Conflict Resolution(Columbia UP, 2016; 440pp. + maps & photos) is an anthology that looks at numerous places where Eastern Christians have lived alongside Muslims, Jews, and other Christians. This book seeks, as the publisher tells us, to

explore the dynamics of shared religious sites in Turkey, the Balkans, Palestine/Israel, Cyprus, and Algeria, indicating where local and national stakeholders maneuver between competition and cooperation, coexistence and conflict. Contributors probe the notion of coexistence and the logic that underlies centuries of "sharing," exploring when and why sharing gets interrupted—or not—by conflict, and the policy consequences.

These essays map the choreographies of shared sacred spaces within the framework of state-society relations, juxtaposing a site's political and religious features and exploring whether sharing or contestation is primarily religious or politically motivated. Although religion and politics are intertwined phenomena, the contributors to this volume understand the category of "religion" and the "political" as devices meant to distinguish between the theological and confessional aspects of religion and the political goals of groups. Their comparative approach better represents the transition in some cases of sites into places of hatred and violence, while in other instances they remain noncontroversial. The essays clearly delineate the religious and political factors that contribute to the context and causality of conflict at these sites and draw on history and anthropology to shed light on the often rapid switch from relative tolerance to distress to peace and calm

Comparisons: Cyprus/Bosnia/Anatolia/Algiers:
2. Three Ways of Sharing the Sacred: Choreographies of Coexistence in Cyprus, by Mete Hatay
3. Religious Antagonism and Shared Sanctuaries in Algeria, by Dionigi Albera
4. Contested Choreographies of Sacred Spaces in Muslim Bosnia, by David Henig

Palestine/Israel:
5. At the Boundaries of the Sacred: The Reinvention of Everyday Life in Jerusalem's al-Wad Street, by Wendy Pullan
6. The Politics of Ownership: State, Governance, and the Status Quo in the Church of the Anastasis (Holy Sepulchre), by Glenn Bowman
7. Choreographing Upheaval: The Politics of Sacred Sites in the West Bank, by Elazar Barkan
8. The Impact of Conflicts Over Holy Sites on City Images and Landscapes: The Case of Nazareth, by Rassem Khamaisi

Museums:
9. Tolerance Versus Holiness: The Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance and the Mamilla Muslim Cemetery, by Yitzhak Reiter
10. Secularizing the Unsecularizable: A Comparative Study of the Haci Bektas and Mevlana Museums in Turkey, by Rabia Harmansah, Tugba Tanyeri-Erdemir, and Robert M. Hayden

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

1) In the 1990s, numerous evangelicals entered Orthodoxy, details of which are to be found in several studies, including the superlative one of D.O. Herbel, Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church. (I interviewed the author here.)
2) Some of those converts turned around and scorned their Protestant heritage, and indeed all non-Orthodox Christians of whatever tradition, loudly and virulently denouncing them as heretics and any efforts at working with them as guilty of the "pan-heresy" of "ecumenism," all phrases that nobody uses except tendentiously and as weaponry.

3) Some evangelicals repay the favour, as it were, if they even know anything at all about Orthodoxy, which they often regard as being in essence a version of Roman Catholicism: icon-worshipping, Mary-devoted, priest-confessing, works-righteous folks with too many statues in their churches and too much formality in that weird biscuit ceremony they call 'Mass' or 'liturgy.'

What, then, will past and present evangelicals and Orthodox alike make of the co-operative efforts of a new book that brings both together in missionary efforts? Will we see an ecumenical explosion of heads?

This is a 'must read' collection of essays that are rooted in prayer, in the Scriptures and in the rich histories of two very different traditions. The variety of topics and perspectives are presented by senior scholars and leaders, giving the reader an excellent glimpse into the ways in which Orthodox and Evangelical Christians around the globe have come together to participate in God's transforming mission. I highly recommend it for all pastors, seminary and Bible college students and staff. (Dr. C. Rosalee Velloso Ewell, PhD, Executive Director, Theological Commission, World Evangelical Alliance.)

The wealth of material in this extraordinary symposium is indicated by the widely dispersed backgrounds - geographical, cultural, and theological - of its contributors. I cannot think of a comparable example in which the evangelical mission of the Church is placed so firmly in the varying contexts of theology, ethics, exegesis, ecumenism, and spiritual transformation. Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon, Orthodox Pastor in Chicago and Senior Editor of Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity

Can Evangelical and Orthodox Christians move from exclusion and competition of the past to mutuality and complementarity in the present? Can the depth of a powerful spiritual tradition be (re)discovered and in some ways appropriated by modern activistic evangelizers and can they both be enriched by each other's strengths? The amazing recent dialogues in the spirit and under the umbrella of the Lausanne Movement for world evangelization - as documented by this extraordinary book - provide us with promising answers to these questions. Diversity, quality and experience of the contributors assure the reader that this compendium points the way toward a future of greater understanding and desirable partnerships in the mission of the Triune God in our complex world. Ecumenism at its best! (Dr. Peter Kuzmic Eva B. and Paul E. Toms Distinguished Professor of World Missions and European Studies, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary.)

An independent teacher, based in Alexandria throughout the second half of the fourth century, Didymus appealed to many within the broadly Origenist currents of Egyptian asceticism, including Jerome, Rufinus, and Evagrius. His commentaries, lecture-notes, and theological treatises show him specifically committed to the legacy of Origen and Philo, rather than a broader "Alexandrian" or noetic reading of Scripture. Yet his concern was not to answer classic "Antiochene" critique but rather offer a faithful continuation of many aspects of Origen's thought and exegesis, now made consistent with the broader anti-subordinationist developments in Nicene faith from the 350s onwards. In doing so he made virtue a primary category of reality, human existence, and life, in ways that go beyond the traditional philosophical tropes.

This "turn to virtue" draws parallels with wider fourth-century trends but it sets Didymus' own Origenism apart from those of other Origenists, such as Eusebius of Caesarea or Evagrius of Pontus. Thus detailed discussion focuses on Didymus' portrayal of virtue, sin, and passion, which together form the constant hermeneutical terrain for his anagogical exegesis and exhortation to a dynamic process of ascent. Speculative comments of Origen on the pre-existence of the soul, salvation of the devil, pre-passion, and the sin of Adam are shown to be reframed, both to aid the individual's navigation of the return to virtue and to answer the challenge of contemporary Manichaean and Apollinarian beliefs.

For the first time a noted historian of Christianity explores the full story of the emergence and development of the Marian cult in the early Christian centuries. The means by which Mary, mother of Jesus, came to prominence have long remained strangely overlooked despite, or perhaps because of, her centrality in Christian devotion. Gathering together fresh information from often neglected sources, including early liturgical texts and Dormition and Assumption apocrypha, Stephen Shoemaker reveals that Marian devotion played a far more vital role in the development of early Christian belief and practice than has been previously recognized, finding evidence that dates back to the latter half of the second century. Through extensive research, the author is able to provide a fascinating background to the hitherto inexplicable “explosion” of Marian devotion that historians and theologians have pondered for decades, offering a wide-ranging study that challenges many conventional beliefs surrounding the subject of Mary, Mother of God.

Friday, August 12, 2016

I was invited to be keynote lecturer at the Ecumenical Society of the Blessed Virgin Mary's annual conference this past weekend at the lovely Catholic college in Newburgh, NY.

I chose as my topic a question that has long perturbed me: why did Pope Pius IX feel he had the right to proceed with a unilateral dogmatic declaration in 1854 concerning the conception of the Theotokos when:

a) no pope before had dared to dream of doing such a thing; and
b) no dogmatic crisis--whether in Mariology or theology proper in the strict sense--was at hand, and thus the old rule of "nothing is defined until it is denied" was not applicable.

Various traditions and scholars agree that there was no crisis to hand, and thus no obvious dogmatic or theological reason to proceed with a definition. The Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission, in several places between 1981 and 2004 (helpfully studied in Studying Mary: The Virgin Mary in Anglican and Catholic Theology and Devotion) agreed that the Immaculate Conception arose when there was no crisis to hand.

The great Russian Orthodox theologian Sergius Bulgakov says the same thing, rather wearily and acerbically, in his book The Burning Bush: On the Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God. And even conservative Catholic scholars such as Sr. Sara Butler agree that there was no crisis to hand, and thus the justification for a definition must be sought on quite other than theological grounds.

The short answer I proffered, drawing on an article I published last year (“Sovereignty, Politics, and the Church: Joseph de Maistre’s Legacy for Catholic and Orthodox Ecclesiology,” Pro Ecclesia 24 [2015]: 366-389), was that the French Revolution, combined with widespread revolutionary turmoil in 1848, led the pope to realize that there was a crisis to hand, a crisis centred precisely on papal power in the temporal realm, which was rapidly coming to a disastrous end, and therefore some new modus operandi in the world and Church must be sought. Thus we see 1854 as the beginning of the popes as global teachers, a notion well described by the irreplaceable studies of Eamon Duffy and Owen Chadwick.

It would, of course, be too much of a stretch, especially in a short lecture, to suggest there is a direct route between 1854 and 2016, but I did sketch out enough evidence, I thought, to indicate some highly probable links between the 1854 definition, the 1950 definition of the Assumption by another pope named Pius, and also the burgeoning papacy commenting on everything under the sun and inserting itself into all manner of thing well and truly beyond its brief. This problem began with Pius IX in 1854, increased under Leo XIII, and then became more and more acute with every pope from him to the current incumbent of the Roman bishopric who seems to have missed all the warnings in the Apophthegmata Patrumabout the importance of bridling one's tongue lest that organ become a σκάνδαλον to the brethren.

Then, for effect on a hot summer evening after three days of a conference, I threw in some spicy bits at the end calling for an overhaul of the papacy to prevent any future popes not only from proceeding with unilateral dogmatic definitions, but also from hosting flying press conferences, having Twitter accounts, giving interviews to anyone for any reason about any topic, and much else besides. I concluded with an especially bon mot from Adrian Fortescue, the English priest-scholar and Orientalist whose views on the papacy were much more acerbic, and much more polemically conveyed, than anything I have ever done in, e.g., my Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy. (It seems a great pity that many of his choicest phrases are to be found in his correspondence, very little of which seems to have been published except in excerpts here and there--as in Aidan Nichols intellectual biography, The Latin Clerk: The Life, Work and Travels of Adrian Fortescue.)

Writing--note well--in 1920, Fortescue, a stout defender of the papacy and Church in other contexts, was forced to admit, “I wish to goodness that the pope would never speak at all except when he means to define ex cathedra. Then we should know where we are.”

Saints and Spectacle examines the origins and reception of the Middle Byzantine program of mosaic decoration. This complex and colorful system of images covers the walls and vaults of churches with figures and compositions seen against a dazzling gold ground. The surviving eleventh-century churches with their wall and vault mosaics largely intact, Hosios Loukas, Nea Moni and Daphni in Greece, pose the challenge of how, when and where this complex and gloriously conceived system was created.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, Connor explores the urban culture and context of church-building in Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire, during the century following the end of Iconoclasm, of around 843 to 950. The application of an innovative frame of reference, through ritual studies, helps recreate the likely scenario in which the medium of mosaics attained its highest potential, in the mosaiced Byzantine church. For mosaics were enlisted to convey a religious and political message that was too nuanced to be expressed in any other way. At a time of revival of learning and the arts, and development of ceremonial practices, the Byzantine emperor and patriarch were united in creating a solution to the problem of consolidating the Greek Orthodox Byzantine Empire. It was through promoting a vision of the unchallengeable authority residing in God and his earthly representative, the emperor. The beliefs and processional practices affirming the protective role of the saints in which the entire city participated, were critical to the reception of this vision by the populace as well as the court. Mosaics were a luxury medium that was ideally situated aesthetically to convey a message at a particularly important historical moment--a brilliant solution to a problem that was to subtly unite an empire for centuries to come. Supported by a wealth of testimony from literary sources, Saints and Spectacle brings the Middle Byzantine church to life as the witness to a compelling and fascinating drama.

In recent years, art historians such as Johannes Deckers (Picturing the Bible, 2009) have argued for a significant transition in fourth- and fifth-century images of Jesus following the conversion of Constantine. Broadly speaking, they perceive the image of a peaceful, benevolent shepherd transformed into a powerful, enthroned Jesus, mimicking and mirroring the dominance and authority of the emperor. The powers of church and state are thus conveniently synthesized in such a potent image. This deeply rooted position assumes that ante-pacem images of Jesus were uniformly humble while post-Constantinian images exuded the grandeur of power and glory.

The Art of Empire contends that the art and imagery of Late Antiquity merits a more nuanced understanding of the context of the imperial period before and after Constantine. The chapters in this collection each treat an aspect of the relationship between early Christian art and the rituals, practices, or imagery of the Empire, and offer a new and fresh perspective on the development of Christian art in its imperial background.

Classifying Christians investigates late antique Christian heresiologies as ethnographies that catalogued and detailed the origins, rituals, doctrines, and customs of the heretics in explicitly polemical and theological terms. Oscillating between ancient ethnographic evidence and contemporary ethnographic writing, Todd S. Berzon argues that late antique heresiology shares an underlying logic with classical ethnography in the ancient Mediterranean world. By providing an account of heresiological writing from the second to fifth century, Classifying Christians embeds heresiology within the historical development of imperial forms of knowledge that have shaped western culture from antiquity to the present.

Monday, August 8, 2016

As I have often noted over the years, interest in icons is at perhaps an all-time high as Protestants, Roman Catholics, and others have "discovered" icons in the last two decades, with many books written by authors from these traditions about icons, and many classes in icon painting being taken by them in parish workshops across the country. To the extent that this helps the West over come its ongoing difficulty with Nicaea II's theology of images, and thus its iconoclasm (an ongoing problem even today), these must be counted encouraging developments.

Along comes another development in Western uses of iconography. Released this year in paperback is a book first published two years ago in hardback: Sigurd Bergmann, In the Beginning is the Icon(Routledge, 2016), 320pp.

About this book we are told:

Icons provide depictions of God or encounters with the divine that enable reflection and prayer. 'In the Beginning is the Icon' explores the value of these images for a theology of liberation. Iconology, art theory, philosophical aesthetics, art history and anthropology are integrated with rigorous theological reflection to argue that the creation and observation of pictures can have a liberating effect on humanity. In presenting art from across the world, 'In the Beginning is the Icon' reflects the ethnocentricity of both art and religious studies and offers a new cross-cultural approach to the theology of art.

Friday, August 5, 2016

With Vespers tonight, we begin to celebrate what is the loveliest of the summer festivals, the luminous and splendid feast of the Transfiguration. I am put in mind again of the collection amassed by the great patrologist Brian Daley, Light on the Mountain: Greek Patristic and Byzantine Homilies on the Transfiguration of the Lord. Published in 2013 in the Popular Patristics Series of St. Vladimir Seminary Press, this rich collection repays careful reading and meditation from year to year.

As the publisher tells us:

The episode of the Transfiguration of Jesus plays a key role in the narrative of the Synoptic Gospels. Peter and his fellow Apostles have just acknowledged Jesus to be Israel s long-awaited Messiah, and have been shocked by Jesus immediate prediction of his coming passion and death. Now Peter, James and John are allowed to share an extraordinary vision, marking him out as truly God s own Son, radiant with divine glory. Early Christian commentators and preachers recognized the crucial importance of this incident for Christian faith and discipleship, as pointing in advance to the power of the cross and resurrection of Christ. The liturgical feast of the Transfiguration, anticipating that of the Exaltation of the Cross by forty days, came to be celebrated in the Eastern and Western Churches, beginning in the seventh century; yet since at least the third century, theologians have reflected on the significance of this event for the life of faith.

This volume brings together, in a new translation, a comprehensive collection of homilies on the Transfiguration of Christ from the Greek Patristic and Medieval Church, from Origen in the third century to St. Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth. Together they form a profound and moving set of meditations, from many perspectives and in many voices, on the light of the recognition of the glory of God in the face of Christ (II Cor 4.6), and on its importance for our lives.

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

I count it as a joy to know the author of a new study whose timeliness, especially in view of ecclesiological debates and controversies at the recently concluded Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Churches, could not be greater. We were doctoral students at the same time a decade ago working in closely overlapping areas, and began communicating then, exchanging draft chapters and bibliographic suggestions. Since that time we have had the great good fortune to meet several times, usually at OTSA gatherings in New York and Boston, and I have always found Will to be an enormously gracious human being.

Often used from Vatican II to the end of the 20th century by both Orthodox and Catholic officials, the expression “sister churches” reflected their growing rapprochement, as well as a shift on the Catholic side from a more centralized ecclesiology to one more attentive to the local church and conciliarity. But in the year 2000, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith put strict limits on how the expression could be used by Catholics. The move coincided with a bold reassertion in official Catholic documents of the unique identity of the Catholic Church as the only one in which the Church of Christ “subsists” and of the crucial importance of Rome’s primacy for the universal church. In the Orthodox world, meanwhile, use of “sister churches” in ecumenical exchanges with Rome had always had adamant detractors for a different reason, namely, that the Roman Catholic Church in their view (not shared by all Orthodox) had been in heresy since the schism. In his comprehensive treatment of the rise and fall of the expression “sister churches” over half a century of Catholic‐Orthodox relations, Dr. Will Cohen explores why the concept developed as it did, why it was so fiercely contested, and what remains vital about the concept today. In the process, Dr. Cohen illuminates pitfalls of both Catholic and Orthodox ecclesiology in mutual isolation and the promise each holds when open to the authentic gifts of the other.

I also hope, with the press of the academic year about to begin, that I shall have a chance to interview Will on here, and will post that in due course.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

I taught a course this past summer entitled "ISIS and the Crusades," looking at the uses and abuses of history by ISIS in its talismanic invocations of "the Crusades." The scholarship on those centuries-long highly complex series of events has been expanding for some time now, but that has not touched at all the tendentious invocation of them by terrorists.

In 1099, when the first Frankish invaders arrived before the walls of Jerusalem, they had carved out a Christian European presence in the Islamic world that endured for centuries, bolstered by subsequent waves of new crusaders and pilgrims. The story of how this group of warriors, driven by faith, greed, and wanderlust, created new Christian-ruled states in parts of the Middle East is one of the best-known in history. Yet it is offers not even half of the story, for it is based almost exclusively on Western sources and overlooks entirely the perspective of the crusaded. How did medieval Muslims perceive what happened?

In The Race for Paradise, Paul M. Cobb offers a new history of the confrontations between Muslims and Franks we now call the "Crusades," one that emphasizes the diversity of Muslim experiences of the European holy war. There is more to the story than Jerusalem, the Templars, Saladin, and the Assassins. Cobb considers the Arab perspective on all shores of the Muslim Mediterranean, from Spain to Syria. In the process, he shows that this is not a straightforward story of warriors and kings clashing in the Holy Land, but a more complicated tale of border-crossers and turncoats; of embassies and merchants; of scholars and spies, all of them seeking to manage a new threat from the barbarian fringes of their ordered world. When seen from the perspective of medieval Muslims, the Crusades emerge as something altogether different from the high-flying rhetoric of the European chronicles: as a cultural encounter to ponder, a diplomatic chess-game to be mastered, a commercial opportunity to be seized, and as so often happened, a political challenge to be exploited by ambitious rulers making canny use of the language of jihad.

An engrossing synthesis of history and scholarship, The Race for Paradise fills a significant historical gap, considering in a new light the events that distinctively shaped Muslim experiences of Europeans until the close of the Middle Ages.

Monday, August 1, 2016

I have often noted on here collections devoted to the Desert Fathers and Mothers. In October of this year we will have another scholarly collection devoted to a desert mother and her daughter: Catherine M. Chin and Caroline T. Schroeder, eds., Melania: Early Christianity through the Life of One Family(U California Press, 2016), 314pp.

About this book we are told:

Melania the Elder and her granddaughter Melania the Younger were major figures in early Christian history, using their wealth, status, and forceful personalities to shape the development of nearly every aspect of the religion we now know as Christianity. This volume examines the influence that these two women had on the development of Christianity and provides an insightful portrait of the their legacies in the modern world. Instead of the traditionally patriarchal view, this perspective gives a poignant and sometimes surprising view of how the rise of Christian institutions in the Roman Empire shaped the understanding of women's roles in the larger world.

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About Me

I am the editor of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies; author of Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy; a tenured associate professor and chairman of the Dept. of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana; and a subdeacon of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church (UGCC) resident in the Eparchy of St. Nicholas of Chicago.